Ester's Place Casa Bonita Inn

This was a mixed stay. The rooms were mostly functional and decent value. The room was clean, the bed comfy, and the AC worked, but the bathroom was cramped and some rooms barely had hot water. There’s a canteen downstairs with drinks and beers, a free beach two minutes away, and the staff were incredibly helpful. They even let us check out a bit later from one room at no extra charge. There was some road noise at night from trucks and bikes. Communication about taxis and activities was unclear. Staff were nice and helpful but didn’t speak English well enough, and mostly just nodded and said yes. We’d clearly spelled out the taxi route when booking, but the driver asked for more money and said he’d been told a different route. We paid because we were short on time, and he watched videos on his phone throughout the ride. The Sumilon island trip felt a bit like a scam. We were told there’d be shady spots on the beach, but there weren’t any. The beach we were taken to was quite small, not the shawl you see on Google maps, and had no shade. The part of Sumilon everyone wants to visit is actually a private resort, costing 2K php (2026) per head, and we weren’t told that. The drive and boat rides to and from Sumilon were smooth and nice. For the whale shark experience, we were warned that staff might wake us in the middle of the night to register, then we could return to bed before diving in the morning. It happened: they woke us at 2:30 and we waited until 3:40 for the stamps. Diving started at 5:45 and was pretty fun. They explained this complication quite clearly, but in some seasons you should expect to miss most of a night’s sleep if you want to dive with the sharks. It seems to be how things work in Oslob itself, not something specific to this hotel. The Tumalog falls trip through the hotel went very smoothly, 100/100.